The use of the Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, and other communication and computer networks has grown dramatically in recent years. The emergence of technologies for broader bandwidth communications, better compression technology, and new and less expensive digital recording and imaging technology, have all contributed to explosive growth in the volume and diversity of content available via communication and/or computer networks, such as the World Wide Web.
However, this proliferation of content, such as audio, image, and video content, presents certain challenges from the perspective of users seeking content of current interest. First, the shear volume of content available makes it difficult for users to find the content in which they are most interested in accessing at any given time. Apart from having to sort through the enormous volume of content available, much of the content of potentially greatest interest, at least to many users, is dynamic. At certain times, a file or other electronic resource may be of great interest while at other times, or perhaps even most of the time, it is not of great interest or not interesting at all.
For example, thousands of and perhaps in excess of a hundred thousand web cameras, or “webcams”, are in use. Webcams are cameras used to provide images of a target of interest via a site on the World Wide Web. Images are updated in varying manners and at varying intervals, depending on the site. A webcam might be used, for example, to provide images of a watering hole in Africa. Typically, users would access a website associated with the webcam to view activity at the watering hole. However, there would be many periods during which nothing of particular interest (e.g., no animals, etc.) would be happening at the watering hole. Conversely, there would be occasional periods when activity of great interest would be occurring, such as the presence of a rare or endangered animal at the watering hole. Users would have no way of knowing when such activity would be occurring and might miss the most interesting images if they did not happen to check the website at the right time. The same problems arise with respect to files or other electronic resources other than webcam content provided via the World Wide Web, including other media such as audio.
As a result, there is a need for a way to alert users to web content or other electronic resources available via a communications or computer network that are of interest at a particular time. To meet this latter need, there is a need to provide a way to become aware that dynamic web content or an electronic resource other than web content is of interest at a given time, and to quantify the degree or level of current interest. In addition, there is a need to consider the interests of a user when determining which web content or other electronic resources likely will be of the greatest interest to the user.
There is also a need to ensure that interested users receive alerts with respect to web content or other electronic resources that are of interest only to a relatively small community of users, or that are of interest on only relatively rare or infrequent occasions. There is a risk, otherwise, that indications of current interest regarding such files and other electronic resources would be masked by more voluminous or frequent activity with respect to more widely popular or pervasive resources or types of resources (such as pornography sites on the World Wide Web).